Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) has announced the roll-out of its innovative new packaging format for plastic bottles in the UK. The new design involves attaching the cap to the bottle after opening, enabling easier recycling of the entire package.
The transition to attached caps began in May 2022 at the company’s bottling plant in East Kilbride, Scotland, for 1.5L bottles of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Diet Coke and Fanta. By September of the same year, 500ml bottles at Edmonton, North London also had the innovative new packaging design.
The production of the bottles with attached caps will now be rolling out from the business’s manufacturing unit in Sidcup, South-East London, and its other GB sites by the end of 2024. CCEP’s Sidcup site will be manufacturing 500ml bottles of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Diet Coke, and Fanta Zero with attached caps, with a production capacity of 250 million bottles yearly.
To accommodate the new packaging format, Sidcup received a £1.2m investment to prepare the assembly lines for production. This investment came shortly after the company’s June 2022 opening of a high-speed canning line, which can produce up to 2,000 cans per minute, facilitating the transition to sustainable packaging.
According to Rory Kerr, the Site Director at CCEP’s Sidcup manufacturing site, “We’re excited to start production of this innovative new packaging format, which will help reduce waste. This is an important milestone for our site, and follows significant investment in our production lines to prepare for this.”
Stephen Moorhouse, VP and General Manager at CCEP GB, lauded the company’s efforts in partnership with Coca-Cola to collect and recycle every bottle or can it sells by 2030, towards creating a World Without Waste. He further stated that “Sidcup is playing a key role in our work to help collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one we sell by 2030. This is a small change that we hope will have a big impact, ensuring that when consumers recycle our bottles, no cap gets left behind.”
To sum up, CCEP’s new packaging format for plastic bottles with attached caps is meant to streamline the recycling process and increase sustainability. The company will continue to invest in innovative technologies and manufacturing processes to support its vision of a World Without Waste.
